A new, fiendish twist has been added to the techniques used for London transport for distributing transport information to the general public this weekend: the Pakistani / Indian tannoy announcer. Not only did this remind me of long trips across the Indian sub continent by train, it reminded me that some ‘’ethnic’’ individuals actually miss out their ‘’a’s’’ and their ‘’the’s’’ from their conversation – even when they’re supposed to be reading from a crib sheet. Now I’m not saying that the information given out on this particular Saturday afternoon was any less incoherent than usual, it’s just that the accented gibberish was so unexpected, if you know what I mean. I mean, what happened to the usual cockney gibberish you would expect to come over the tannoy? I understand that equal opportunity has to go to train drivers and other London Underground staff regardless of their level of English appreciation, but isn’t a good, coherent grasp of the English language rather useful to the London Transport information announcement system? I ask you, is this really on?

Baker St station in particular has some kind of obsession with using their announcement systems for any and every reason at any time of the day or night. One person in particular seems to have a fetish for using the speakers to tell us that 'the service is currently working and there and no problems' over and over again. Why they can't use announcements to tell us JUST when things are going wrong or things we actually NEED to know is beyond me.

They shout at cleaners over it, demand staff return to ticket offices etc. I don't even take my ipod off anymore to listen to their rubbish/uninformative prolonged drivel. I know I risk being cooked in a fire for not bothering to pay attention but 9 out of 10 times it's non-information bragging about how well the service is running. It's a bit like a pilot of a plane bragging that the plane landed safely. Isn't it SUPPOSED to do that?

Did you speak to the station supervisor and give the supervisor your opinion?